Skip to main content

Privacy Policy

Effective date: March 31, 2024

At The San Francisco Standard (the “SF Standard”), we take your privacy seriously. Please read this Privacy Policy to learn how we treat your personal data. By using or accessing our Services in any manner, you acknowledge that you accept the practices and policies outlined below, and you hereby consent that we will collect, use and share your information as described in this Privacy Policy.

Remember that your use of The San Francisco Standard’s Services is at all times subject to our Terms of Use, which incorporates this Privacy Policy. Any terms we use in this Policy without defining them have the definitions given to them in the Terms of Use. 

You may print a copy of this Privacy Policy by clicking here

Privacy Policy Table of Contents

What this Privacy Policy Covers

This Privacy Policy covers how we treat Personal Data that we gather when you access or use our Services. “Personal Data” means any information that identifies or relates to a particular individual and also includes information referred to as “personally identifiable information” or “personal information” under applicable data privacy laws, rules or regulations. This Privacy Policy does not cover the practices of companies we don’t own or control or people we don’t manage.

Personal Data

Categories of Personal Data We Collect

This chart details the categories of Personal Data that we collect and have collected over the past 12 months:

Category of Personal Data  Examples of Personal Data We Collect Categories of Third Parties With Whom We Share this Personal Data: 
Profile or Contact Data
  • First and last name
  • Email
  • Service Providers
Device/IP Data
  • IP address
  • Device ID
  • Domain server
  • Type of device/operating system/browser used to access the Services
  • Service Providers
  • Analytics Partners
Web Analytics
  • Web page interactions
  • Referring webpage/source through which you accessed the Services
  • Statistics associated with the interaction between device or browser and the Services
  • Service Providers
  • Analytics Partners
Geolocation Data
  • IP-address-based location information
  • Service Providers
  • Analytics Partners

Categories of Sources of Personal Data

We collect Personal Data about you from the following categories of sources:

  • You
    • When you provide such information directly to us.
      • When you create an account or use our interactive tools and Services.
      • When you voluntarily provide information in free-form text boxes through the Services or through responses to surveys, polls or questionnaires.
      • When you send us an email or otherwise contact us.  
    • When you use the Services and such information is collected automatically.
      • Through Cookies (defined in the “Tracking Tools and Opt-Out” section below).
      • If you download our mobile application or use a location-enabled browser, we may receive information about your location and mobile device, as applicable.
      • If you download and install certain applications and software we make available, we may receive and collect information transmitted from your computing device for the purpose of providing you the relevant Services, such as information regarding when you are logged on and available to receive updates or alert notices.
  • Third Parties
    • Vendors
      • We may use analytics providers to analyze how you interact and engage with the Services, or third parties may help us provide you with customer support.

Our Commercial or Business Purposes for Collecting Personal Data

  • Providing, Customizing and Improving the Services
    • Processing orders, sweepstakes entries or other transactions; billing.
    • Providing you with the products, services or information you request.
    • Meeting or fulfilling the reason you provided the information to us.
    • Providing support and assistance for the Services.
    • Improving the Services, including testing, research, internal analytics and product development.
    • Personalizing the Services, website content and communications based on your preferences.
    • Doing fraud protection, security and debugging.
    • Carrying out other business purposes stated when collecting your Personal Data or as otherwise set forth in applicable data privacy laws, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (the “CCPA”).
  • Marketing the Services
    • Marketing and selling the Services.
  • Corresponding with You
    • Responding to correspondence that we receive from you, contacting you when necessary or requested, and sending you information about The SF Standard or the Services.
    • Sending emails and other communications according to your preferences or that display content that we think will interest you.
  • Meeting Legal Requirements and Enforcing Legal Terms
    • Fulfilling our legal obligations under applicable law, regulation, court order or other legal process, such as preventing, detecting and investigating security incidents and potentially illegal or prohibited activities.
    • Protecting the rights, property or safety of you, The SF Standard or another party.
    • Enforcing any agreements with you.
    • Responding to claims that any posting or other content violates third-party rights.
    • Resolving disputes.

We will not collect additional categories of Personal Data or use the Personal Data we collected for materially different, unrelated or incompatible purposes without providing you notice.

How We Share Your Personal Data

We disclose your Personal Data to the categories of service providers and other parties listed in this section. Depending on state laws that may be applicable to you, some of these disclosures may constitute a “sale” of your Personal Data. For more information, please refer to the state-specific sections below.

  • Service Providers. These parties help us provide the Services or perform business functions on our behalf. They include:
    • Support and customer service vendors and communication providers
    • Analytics providers
    • Payment processors.
      • Our payment processing partner Stripe, Inc. (“Stripe”) collects your voluntarily-provided payment card information necessary to process your payment.
      • Please see Stripe’s terms of service and privacy policy for information on its use and storage of your Personal Data.
  • Business Partners. These parties partner with us in offering various services. They include:
    • Businesses that you have a relationship with.
    • Companies that we partner with to offer joint promotional offers or opportunities.

Legal Obligations

We may share any Personal Data that we collect with third parties in conjunction with any of the activities set forth under “Meeting Legal Requirements and Enforcing Legal Terms” in the “Our Commercial or Business Purposes for Collecting Personal Data” section above.

Business Transfers

All of your Personal Data that we collect may be transferred to a third party if we undergo a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy or other transaction in which that third party assumes control of our business (in whole or in part). Should one of these events occur, we will make reasonable efforts to notify you before your information becomes subject to different privacy and security policies and practices.

Data that is Not Personal Data

We may create aggregated, de-identified or anonymized data from the Personal Data we collect, including by removing information that makes the data personally identifiable to a particular user. We may use such aggregated, de-identified or anonymized data and share it with third parties for our lawful business purposes, including to analyze, build and improve the Services and promote our business, provided that we will not share such data in a manner that could identify you. 

Tracking Tools and Opt-Out

The Services use cookies and similar technologies such as pixel tags, web beacons, clear GIFs and JavaScript (collectively, “Cookies”) to enable our servers to recognize your web browser, tell us how and when you visit and use our Services, analyze trends, learn about our user base and operate and improve our Services. Cookies are small pieces of data–usually text files – placed on your computer, tablet, phone or similar device when you use that device to access our Services. We may also supplement the information we collect from you with information received from third parties, including third parties that have placed their own Cookies on your device(s). Please note that because of our use of Cookies, the Services do not support “Do Not Track” requests sent from a browser at this time.

We use the following types of Cookies:

  • Essential Cookies. Essential Cookies are required for providing you with features or services that you have requested. For example, certain Cookies enable you to access areas of our Services. Disabling these Cookies may make certain features and services unavailable.
  • Functional Cookies. Functional Cookies are used to record your choices and settings regarding our Services, maintain your preferences over time and recognize you when you return to our Services. These Cookies help us to personalize our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
  • Performance/Analytical Cookies: Performance/Analytical Cookies allow us to understand how visitors use our Services. They do this by collecting information about the number of visitors to the Services, what pages visitors view on our Services and how long visitors are viewing pages on the Services. Performance/Analytical Cookies also help us measure the performance of our advertising campaigns in order to help us improve our campaigns and the Services’ content for those who engage with our advertising. For example, Google LLC (“Google”) uses cookies in connection with its Google Analytics services. Google’s ability to use and share information collected by Google Analytics about your visits to the Services is subject to the Google Analytics Terms of Use and the Google Privacy Policy. You have the option to opt-out of Google’s use of Cookies by visiting the Google advertising opt-out page at www.google.com/privacy_ads.html or the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/. Similarly, Parse.ly also provides analytics services and any information collected by Parse.ly about your visits to the Services is subject to their Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

You can decide whether or not to accept Cookies through your internet browser’s settings. Most browsers have an option for turning off the Cookie feature, which will prevent your browser from accepting new Cookies, as well as (depending on the sophistication of your browser software) allow you to decide on acceptance of each new Cookie in a variety of ways. You can also delete all Cookies that are already on your device. If you do this, however, you may have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit our website and some of the Services and functionalities may not work. 

To explore what Cookie settings are available to you, look in the “preferences” or “options” section of your browser’s menu. To find out more information about Cookies, including information about how to manage and delete Cookies, please visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org/.

Data Security and Retention

We seek to protect your Personal Data from unauthorized access, use and disclosure using appropriate physical, technical, organizational and administrative security measures based on the type of Personal Data and how we are processing that data. You should also help protect your data by appropriately selecting and protecting your password and/or other sign-on mechanism; limiting access to your computer or device and browser; and signing off after you have finished accessing your account. Although we work to protect the security of your account and other data that we hold in our records, please be aware that no method of transmitting data over the internet or storing data is completely secure.

We retain Personal Data about you for as long as you have an open account with us or as otherwise necessary to provide you with our Services. In some cases we retain Personal Data for longer, if doing so is necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes or collect fees owed, or is otherwise permitted or required by applicable law, rule or regulation. We may further retain information in an anonymous or aggregated form where that information would not identify you personally.

Personal Data of Children

The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”) requires that online service providers obtain parental consent before they knowingly collect personally identifiable information online from children who are under 13 years of age. We do not knowingly collect or solicit personally identifiable information from a child under 13 without obtaining verifiable consent from that child’s parent or guardian (“Parental Consent”), except for the limited amount of personally identifiable information we need to collect in order to obtain Parental Consent (“Required Information”). Until we have received Parental Consent, we will only use Required Information for the purpose of obtaining Parental Consent. If you are a child under 13 years of age, please do not attempt to send any Personal Data about yourself to us before we obtain Parental Consent, except for the Required Information in the context of the Parental Consent process. If you believe that a child under 13 years of age has provided us with Personal Data (beyond the Required Information) without our obtaining Parental Consent, please contact us at [Support Email Address]. We do not condition participation in our Services on disclosure of more Personal Data from a child under 13 years of age than is reasonably necessary for that participation, and we do not retain Personal Data from children under 13 years of age longer than is reasonably necessary in order to fulfill the purpose for which it was disclosed.

If you are a parent or guardian of a user of our Services who is under 13 years of age, you may contact us at any time to ask that (a) we stop collecting Personal Data from such user, (b) we delete any Personal Data already collected from such user (although note that we may further retain information in an anonymous or aggregated form where that information would not identify such user personally), or (c) we stop disclosing Personal Data collected from such user to third parties, but continue to allow for collection and use of Personal Data collected from such user in connection with the Services.

California Resident Rights

If you are a California resident, you have the rights set forth in this section. Please see the “Exercising Your Rights” section below for instructions regarding how to exercise these rights. Please note that we may process Personal Data of our customers’ end users or employees in connection with our provision of certain services to our customers. If we are processing your Personal Data as a service provider, you should contact the entity that collected your Personal Data in the first instance to address your rights with respect to such data.

If there are any conflicts between this section and any other provision of this Privacy Policy and you are a California resident, the portion that is more protective of Personal Data shall control to the extent of such conflict. If you have any questions about this section or whether any of the following rights apply to you, please contact us at [email protected].

Access

You have the right to request certain information about our collection and use of your Personal Data over the past 12 months. In response, we will provide you with the following information:

  • The categories of Personal Data that we have collected about you.
  • The categories of sources from which that Personal Data was collected.
  • The business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling your Personal Data.
  • The categories of third parties with whom we have shared your Personal Data.
  • The specific pieces of Personal Data that we have collected about you.

If we have disclosed your Personal Data to any third parties for a business purpose over the past 12 months, we will identify the categories of Personal Data shared with each category of third party recipient. If we have sold your Personal Data over the past 12 months, we will identify the categories of Personal Data sold to each category of third party recipient.

Deletion

You have the right to request that we delete the Personal Data that we have collected about you. Under the CCPA, this right is subject to certain exceptions: for example, we may need to retain your Personal Data to provide you with the Services or complete a transaction or other action you have requested. If your deletion request is subject to one of these exceptions, we may deny your deletion request.

Exercising Your Rights

To exercise the rights described above, you or your Authorized Agent (defined below) must send us a request that (1) provides sufficient information to allow us to verify that you are the person about whom we have collected Personal Data, like your full name and email address that you used to sign-up or make payments, and (2) describes your request in sufficient detail to allow us to understand, evaluate and respond to it. Each request that meets both of these criteria will be considered a “Valid Request.” We may not respond to requests that do not meet these criteria. We will only use Personal Data provided in a Valid Request to verify your identity and complete your request. You do not need an account to submit a Valid Request.

We will work to respond to your Valid Request within 45 days of receipt. We will not charge you a fee for making a Valid Request unless your Valid Request(s) is excessive, repetitive or manifestly unfounded. If we determine that your Valid Request warrants a fee, we will notify you of the fee and explain that decision before completing your request.

You may submit a Valid Request using the following methods:

You may also authorize an agent (an “Authorized Agent”) to exercise your rights on your behalf. To do this, you must provide your Authorized Agent with written permission to exercise your rights on your behalf, and we may request a copy of this written permission from your Authorized Agent when they make a request on your behalf.

Personal Data Sales Opt-Out and Opt-In

We will not sell your Personal Data, and have not done so over the last 12 months. To our knowledge, we do not sell the Personal Data of minors under 16 years of age.

We Will Not Discriminate Against You for Exercising Your Rights Under the CCPA

We will not discriminate against you for exercising your rights under the CCPA. We will not deny you our goods or services, charge you different prices or rates, or provide you a lower quality of goods and services if you exercise your rights under the CCPA. However, we may offer different tiers of our Services as allowed by applicable data privacy laws (including the CCPA) with varying prices, rates or levels of quality of the goods or services you receive related to the value of Personal Data that we receive from you.

Other State Law Privacy Rights

California Resident Rights

Under California Civil Code Sections 1798.83-1798.84, California residents are entitled to contact us to prevent disclosure of Personal Data to third parties for such third parties’ direct marketing purposes; in order to submit such a request, please contact us at [email protected].

Nevada Resident Rights

If you are a resident of Nevada, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of certain Personal Data to third parties who intend to license or sell that Personal Data. You can exercise this right by contacting us at [email protected] with the subject line “Nevada Do Not Sell Request” and providing us with your name and the email address associated with your account.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We’re constantly trying to improve our Services, so we may need to change this Privacy Policy from time to time, but we will alert you to any such changes by placing a notice on the The SF Standard website, by sending you an email and/or by some other means. Please note that if you’ve opted not to receive legal notice emails from us (or you haven’t provided us with your email address), those legal notices will still govern your use of the Services, and you are still responsible for reading and understanding them. If you use the Services after any changes to the Privacy Policy have been posted, that means you agree to all of the changes. Use of information we collect is subject to the Privacy Policy in effect at the time such information is collected.

Contact Information:

If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, the ways in which we collect and use your Personal Data or your choices and rights regarding such collection and use, please do not hesitate to contact us at:

  • https://sfstandard.com/
  • 290 Division St., San Francisco, California 94103